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Waterside Hostel - by Tintagel

Map (Click to enlarge)

Created in: Dunjinni / Photoshop
Review
Our first featured Dundjinni based map! Tintagel brings us the Waterside Hostel, which some of you may know from the classic Temple of Elemental Evil module. This map is a great testament to using software designed for fantasy mapmaking and pushing the boundaries by adding a post-production process for the lighting and shading which was done using Adobe Photoshop. Be sure to check out the rest of this module mapping process.

This map was not in the original module - at least not in any real way. The Waterside Hostel is given all of 3/4 of a page in the module, and no official floor map, so I had to make up most of it. The module description is short but colorful:

This place is one of the more substantial buildings in Nulb. It has a foundation of field stone and walls of sawn timber, but is nonetheless a scurvy place. Its main trade is in its tavern room, though occasional travelers stop to spend the night. Rich guests have been known to disappear mysteriously.

The hostler is a burly fellow with a scarred, pockmarked visage, one eye covered by a patch. The barkeep is lanky and of greasy appearance, but quite tall. Two slovenly wenches and two manservants of surly mein hover about the place.

Sounds like a wonderful place to map! So far, I have only completed the ground level, and I may never attempt the 2nd floor, because frankly, it would just be a few rooms, and I don't suspect combat will occur there - most of the action will definitely take place in the main room. So if you need the second floor, buy Dundjinni and map it yerself. :-P

I spent a bit less time on this map than the other two, partly due it being smaller, but also because I think I am starting to get the hang of both software titles. I am starting to develop my own shortcuts in Photoshop for lighting and I have a good, organized collection of base images in Dundjinni to play with. I tried a few new things on this one: window frame shadows, drop-shadow effects on interior and exterior walls, text, compass and scale, and some use of Photoshop's healing brush to soften edges. I even tried a .5 pixel Gaussian blur on the outside, to give a bit more attention to the interior of the place.